What is TB.Pensar? Find out here.

Let me start off with a change you may have noticed recently on the site, in the form of the “Happening in Tokyo” posts (like this one). In the past couple of years I’ve gradually been posting less about events. In part, I felt that my TAB badge in the sidebar did the same job, and honestly, I just didn’t really enjoy doing them that much. Most of what I post here adds to the “resources” of my site — when I want more info on something, the first thing I do is do a search on my site for appropriate posts or links — and time-sensitive events didn’t really add to that. But I do realize that TAB doesn’t cover everything, and I do like to highlight the occasional event that interests me, so I think a fair compromise is the “Happening in Tokyo” post, which will appear whenever I have 2-3 events to list.

June for me is going to mark big changes: most of my time now will be devoted to freelance work (I’ll only be teaching twice a week) starting June 1, which just happens to be the day following my birthday. Sure, it’s a bit scary, but it’s a necessary step, and also means that I’ll finally be able to devote more time to the things I really have a passion for. The first thing you should see is me finally paying attention to the temporary M31 website, as I start putting things on there, and updating it regularly with new work, projects, etc. Here’s looking forward to a productive (and even more importantly, happy) 2007!

The promised game column with Brad has yet to launch, and for that I apologize. Maybe it’s a sign that I should start cutting down on the playing (that means trying, with great difficulty, to limit my time on WORLD OF WARCRAFT, BLUE DRAGON, SUPER PAPER MARIO, and MARIO STRIKERS CHARGED FOOTBALL, as well as all those damn card games I play).

Another thing is that I think I’ll start selling Japanese magazines on my site again. I’ve done it in the past in an informal way, but have been wanting to try again with a proper cart-like shopping structure. I finally took the time to look into the services that PayPal offers, and I think that I should be able to start very soon with something that will be quite basic at first, but may eventually grow into something larger (depending on sales, I suppose, and the time I need to devote to this). In the end, I’m doing it because I know there are a lot of magazine freaks like me out there who would love to get their hands on the sort of titles I cover in my “This Week in Magazines” posts, and so I figure I should do my part to help out the world magazine-lovers community. I expect I’ll have something up by the end of the week.

And in case you missed it, a new episode of RADIO OK FRED (9) is up. Yes, after an unfortunate — and ridiculously long — hiatus, we’re back, and with my new life changes, I do believe we’ll be able to get back on schedule and release new episodes at regular intervals. The next episode is already planned, and will be themed around Serge Gainsbourg.

Let me end with PauseTalk. After May’s cancellation, it returns next week, June 4, at the regular start time of 19:30. I believe Momus is planning on showing up, which should make for some interesting — and opiniated –talk!